


on the rocks

by Milieu



Category: Ancient Greek Religion & Lore
Genre: Alcohol, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Hopeful Ending, Inspired by Hadestown, Male-Female Friendship, Organized Crime, Other, Past Abuse, Semi-Hadestown AU I guess, Unhealthy Relationships
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-28
Updated: 2019-09-28
Packaged: 2020-10-27 22:30:37
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 905
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20767991
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Milieu/pseuds/Milieu
Summary: Zeus's leftovers strike up an unlikely friendship.





	on the rocks

**Author's Note:**

  * For [zenheim](https://archiveofourown.org/users/zenheim/gifts).

He wasn't the beautiful boy he had been once, but his hands were still quick and skillful, and his manner was still impeccably demure. Or maybe she just felt that way because he always seemed to favor her in particular, and she was no spring chicken herself by now.

The Ganymede that had lounged in Zeus's lap, all rosy cheeks and golden curls, plying him with drink until the big man's laughter rumbled through the house, learning to strike the balance so that his energy would fall just short of turning his mirth to rage at the drop of a hat- that Ganymede was no more. His hair was dark now, his eyes shadowed, cheeks hollow and pale. It had almost startled Hera, the first time she saw him as himself, instead of as Zeus's made-up plaything. When he did smile, rarely now, it was still brighter than the sun. The first quick, furtive smile that he had ever shot in her direction had inspired something utterly alien deep in the pit of Hera's chest.

Sympathy, perhaps. Or hope, for one or both of them.

Hera's jealous rages, directed at Ganymede or anyone else, were long gone. The envy was still there, always eating at her core. The insecurity would probably always plague her. She would always be bitter, bitterer than anything he could fill a cup with to give to her. But she, like everyone and everything else in the world, had changed. It had taken years, probably far too many years, to realize when she too was in the wrong. To see where her anger really should have been directed, and to work through herself why it hadn't been.

Ganymede had been barely a man when Zeus ate him alive, and Hera had never stopped giving everything to the man that took and took and took from them both. If they both chose to wallow in it, nobody had any right to blame them.

For a while, they did both wallow. But one evening, as Ganymede refilled her glass again and again didn't ask where her husband was, who might be dying on his words or paying through the nose for his favor or being eaten alive in his bed like both of them had been, he gave her that smile. Barely there, gone in a flash. It was the first genuine smile anyone had given her in a long time.

Something in her finally broke then. And to her surprise as much as anyone's, it reformed into something new.

After that, she began to talk to him. He was a good listener; that was just one of many skills he'd honed over the years, in Zeus's service and out of it. She complained. She raged. She wept.

Finally, she asked him to do the same.

She should have been there for him. She should have comforted him all those years ago, when he didn't know any better, when he had no power to do anything but what he was told. She never should have hated him for stealing the eyes of a man who could never be faithful. Maybe it was too little, too late.

Even if it was, little by little, Ganymede cracked too. The night he finally let everything out in a tumbling rush, finally broke down and wept in her arms, she had cried for him too, but she had been happy.

And then she began to plan.

Word got around, even city to city. Zeus wasn't the only one with eyes and ears everywhere. Hera had always known more than anyone thought she did.

Her brother-in-law, he didn't treat his woman too well either. The whispers coming down the grapevine insinuated that Persephone might even have a little something on the side, some pretty young thing she was trying to save from Hades's clutches. Maybe she wouldn't be too little, too late, like Hera was. That wasn't what mattered to Hera.

What mattered was that they had potential allies.

This filthy city. This world. She was done with letting other people control it. Zeus had been slipping for years. Once he'd been a god among men; now more and more people saw him for the drunk philanderer he always had been. That cloth was already unraveling. It wouldn't take much pulling at all.

First Zeus. Then Hades. Maybe the other way around, even, if it worked out that way, but first one and then the other. Then- she didn't know what then. But there was a future. She had a plan. She had friends that they didn't have, and she could come up with an alibi and a getaway. It wouldn't be the first time she'd done it, but maybe it would be the first time she was aiming at the right target.

She whispered her ideas and plans to Ganymede, piece by piece, watching his face reluctantly light up first with interest, and then with cautious hope. There was something else too, of course, a little spark of devilish delight because he too deserved a bit of revenge for all that had been taken from him before he had a chance to understand what he was giving, only knowing that he had no choice.

They clinked their glasses together and didn't say what they were toasting to. It could have been anything in the world, but for a moment, Hera liked to think that it was friendship.

**Author's Note:**

> "Mafia au is one of your go-tos" - zenheim 2019, calling me out
> 
> I rewrote this like three times and it is late late late and short and I am sorry but here it is!!


End file.
